Last Dinosaurs
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Last Dinosaurs

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According to Caskey, a very important lesson got learned during Last Dinosaurs’ tour with Foals – when it comes to songwriting, they key is to work towards the greater good of the track and put all egos aside.

After something of a stagnant period in 2010, during which frontman Sean Caskey and Last Dinosaurs experienced a bout of boredom and lack of inspiration – something magical happened all of a sudden! First – the Brisbane trop-rock four-piece landed an eye-opening tour with U.K. indie types Foals, then, Caskey came to develop an interest in 1800s inventor Nikola Tesla. No pun intended, but according to the singer, a light bulb literally did go off in Caskey’s head.

"Lyrically, I’ve struggled extremely with that and felt like I ran out of things to talk about," he confesses. "I didn’t go to uni or anything, so I was really bored last year and spent loads of time on YouTube. I really got into Nikola Tesla and I started watching videos about him and reading about him on Wikipedia. He’s just the most interesting guy – he invented everything! Because Nikola was a Jew and Serbian he copped a lot of prejudice and it pushed him to the point of a mental breakdown. He shriveled away in a New York apartment and died, and Thomas Edison got all the fame, glory and credit. But just before his breakdown, Nikola was so close to building a tower to bring wireless electricity to the entire world – can you imagine how different the whole world would have been?"

Certainly, it’s something to think about. And just as Tesla was revolutionary to providing us with electricity, according to Caskey, British indie-rockers Foals have been revolutionary to not only the current music scene but also in serving as inspiration to Last Dinosaurs as a band.

"I think for people my age, Foals have been as revolutionary as The Strokes were," states Caskey. "They’re just so different and so good at what they do – everyone that hears them gets absolutely addicted to them. The weird thing is they’re so underground but you go on their Myspace and they get a million plays per day – holy shit! Playing with them really inspired us and gave us reason to get stuck into making an album. We were at a point where we were supposed to record but we just didn’t have enough songs, though we released the single [Time And Place] just to keep things rolling along in the meantime."

According to Caskey, a very important lesson got learned during Last Dinosaurs’ tour with Foals – when it comes to songwriting, they key is to work towards the greater good of the track and put all egos aside.

"Just from watching Foals and talking to them, I learned heaps from them," Caskey says. "I was relatively drunk at the time but we were talking to the band about songwriting. They were saying how everyone has to be a unit, that’s the trick to it. It has to work for the song, rather than just one person making the song suit them. With us, everyone wanted to do what they wanted to do. Like, okay someone wants to do a solo here, but does it suit the whole song? No, not really… So we learned how important it is that everyone has to work together for the greater good of the song, and to put egos aside."

Caskey also warns that the band’s upcoming double headliner with Papa Vs Pretty is going to be made up mostly of songs unknown to the general audience. It’ll give a big taste of what’s to come on the upcoming album, but it will also see some fan favourites get a re-working.

"I hope people don’t think it’s too weird because we’ve dropped a few songs from our set. Most of the songs are stuff that will go on the album which we are about to record, so it’s all going to be very new to a lot of people. It might be a bit weird because nobody will probably understand them or know what kind of sound to expect with our new stuff. Actually, Honolulu could be one of the only tracks they’ll know."